The Trinity and Love

Dear St Andrew’s,

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, the day in the church calendar when we especially remember that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Which is wonderful. And difficult.

Several years ago we invited a lecturer from Moore College to preach on the Trinity. At the end of the service someone said to me, “Well, I’m glad someone understands it, because I don’t!” Not quite the outcome we were hoping for.

But I do understand the feeling. The Trinity can sound like theological Sudoku: three persons, one God, not three gods, not one person wearing three hats. We quickly discover that our brains are not quite large enough for the subject.

But perhaps that is not surprising. If God is God, then we should expect him to be greater than our understanding. The Trinity is a mystery in the ordinary sense: it stretches us. But it is also a mystery in the biblical sense: a truth God has graciously revealed. We do not invent the Trinity. We receive it from Scripture.

The Old Testament declares there is one God, the Creator of all things, who alone is to be worshipped and loved: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The New Testament agrees, but also reveals the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit working together for our salvation. The Father chooses us, the Son redeems us, the Spirit seals us (Ephesians 1:3–14). We are baptised into the one name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19).

And this matters deeply, because it means that love is not something God started doing when he made the world. Love is who God eternally is.

“God is love” (1 John 4:16). If God were only one person, he could love himself. That would be true love, but not love in its fullness. If God were two persons, there could be mutual love: one loving the other and the other loving in return. But because God is Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, there is the fullness of love: self-love, mutual love, and communal love, as each person loves the other two in the eternal communion of God.

This means the deepest reality in the universe is not loneliness, power, chance, or conflict. The deepest reality is holy love. And the gospel is that we are invited into it. Through the Son, by the Spirit, we are brought to the Father. We are not merely forgiven at a distance. We are welcomed home.

So this Trinity Sunday, let your mind be stretched. But even more, let your heart be warmed. The God who is love has loved us, saved us, and drawn us into his life.

Happy Trinity Sunday.

James